Patrick White Poems

By the time you say it, you're a bridge beyond the last river of your lament.
Is there meaning in this, content? Emerging
from this cold oceanic reflection, how good
to wrap the sky around you like a blue woolen robe warmed by a fire,
...

So lifetime after lifetime, sorceress of shadows and dreams
you step out of the dark wood of yourself,
a shy doe, a mournful lighthouse and a warning off the coast
of your infinite solitude, you, the singing bird
...

Murder me again with your voice,
the moon, your maculate heart, the weapon of your choice.
I am space, light, water, air, stars beyond your reach.
Meteor showers have been looking for my species for years
...

O igneous rose, are you the furnace or the urn of the butterfly?
Or should I ask the vatic wind which pyre is mine?
Will I be be food for the stars again, will I mulch
the dark matter of the roots with my remains
...

Not even the light of the stars
shining like the keys to the ancient love-letters
bound among the secret jewels
of the queen of heaven
...

for Kristine Marie

When someone loves you and you're no one,
what happens then? What do you have to give
...

Among the skeletons of the sundials
what deficits of time remain unlived, unfulfilled?
So much forfeited to what crowded it out.
And the more that was said, the more
...

Seeds of fire in a nightsky root like flowers
in the ashes of my eyes I scattered on the wind
like the dust of stars I followed even into oblivion
to remain faithful to the life of the light
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Someone to rejoice in. Foolish thought.
Epiphanous absurdity. My interminable longing
for a treasure, a happiness, a companion
I'm not even sure I deserve, is agitating
...

for Rebekah Genevieve Dolorese Garland

Just before the air went radioactive again, it turned into glass, hot, viscous tears in a blast furnace. And you were in it, over your head in amber. Drysophila. Fruit fly. Speedy genes. Be fruitful and multiply. You were. I know because I've been there.
...